Organizing with Categories
Build the category tree your products belong to: creating, editing, reordering, and browsing categories.
Categories are how shoppers navigate your store — "Men's Clothing," "Accessories," "New Arrivals." A well-organized category tree makes it faster for customers to find what they want, and gives your store cleaner web addresses for search engines to index.
What you get
- A dedicated editor page for creating and editing categories, with an image, status, and parent.
- A tree or flat list view of your whole category structure.
- Drag-and-drop reordering, with an explicit save step.
- A per-category product count, with a click-through to see what's inside.
Screen: Categories
Go to Categories in the left sidebar. This lists every category you've created, with an image, its item count, and its status.
Tree/flat toggle is new-admin-panel only
On the new (v2) admin panel, a toggle at the top of the list switches between a tree view (showing parent/child nesting) and a flat view. The classic (default) admin panel doesn't have this toggle — its Categories list is always a plain flat table, with no nesting shown.
Click + New category to create one, or click any category row to open it.
Click into a category
Clicking a category opens its detail page, which lists every product currently assigned to it — useful for spot-checking that a category actually contains what you expect before you publish it widely.
Creating or editing a category
Click + New category (or click an existing category, then Edit) to open the category editor page.
| Field | What to enter |
|---|---|
| Name | The category name shoppers see — e.g. "Men's Clothing" |
| Slug | The web-address-friendly name (e.g. mens-clothing). Auto-generated from the name, but you can customize it |
| Description | Optional description text |
| Image | A cover image shown on category listing pages and navigation menus — drag and drop or click to upload, with a preview |
| Status | Active (visible on your storefront) or Draft (hidden while you set it up) |
| Parent category | Optional — choose an existing category to nest this one underneath, building your tree |
Click Save. A category can't be saved without a name; the Save button stays disabled until you've entered one.
SEO fields: new admin panel only
On the new (v2) admin panel, an SEO toggle (collapsed by default) reveals Meta title and Meta description fields for the category, in both the quick-create drawer and the full category editor page. On the classic (default) admin panel, the category editor has no SEO fields at all. OG image isn't exposed for editing on either version, even though it exists in the data model.
A product can belong to more than one category
A product isn't limited to a single category — a "Summer Dress" might sit under both "Dresses" and "Sale." You choose which category is the primary one when creating or editing the product itself, not from the Categories screen.
Reordering categories
Click Reorder at the top of the Categories list to enter reorder mode. Drag categories into the order you want them to appear, then click Save order to commit the change. Until you click Save, your drag-and-drop changes aren't persisted.
Product count per category
Every category row shows how many products are currently assigned to it. Click into the category to see the actual list of products behind that count — a quick way to confirm a category isn't empty, or to catch products that ended up in the wrong place.
Deleting a category
On the classic (default) admin panel, every category row has its own Delete icon. Clicking it opens a confirmation dialog naming the category — confirm to permanently remove it.
Bulk delete and delete on the new admin panel
On the new (v2) admin panel, there's no delete control on an individual category row or in the list toolbar today — deleting a single category isn't available there yet. If you need to retire a category on v2, set its status to Draft to hide it from your storefront instead. (v2 does have an unfinished bulk-delete option behind row-selection checkboxes, but those checkboxes don't currently appear anywhere in the UI, so bulk delete isn't reachable on either admin panel version.)
Next steps
- Adding & Editing Products — assign products to the categories you've built here.
- Bulk Import & Bulk Edit — import products directly into a category by name via CSV.